A woman accusing Russell Brand of raping her in a hotel room broke down in tears in court as she insisted “I couldn’t fight back”.
Brand, now 51, is accused of forcing himself on the woman after meeting her at a cabaret show at the 1999 Labour Party conference. She told Southwark Crown Court on Thursday that she invited Brand to her hotel room believing he was gay, and says she did not feel able to flee when he turned on her.
Woman's testimony in court
“I know he raped me, I know I said ‘no, no, I don’t want this’”, she said, in a series of fiery exchanges with Brand’s barrister Ian Winter KC, telling the barrister: “I am the one who is being silenced.”
She said she struggled to breathe when Brand was on top of her, and told the court: “I did not want sex from him… I couldn’t fight back.” Raising her voice, she added: “I don’t love him, I don’t find him attractive. Never have.”
Brand has been accused of telling the woman “it’s just fun” as he was raping her that night in 1999. He denies allegations from six different women, and has pleaded not guilty to three counts of rape, three counts of sexual assault, and one count of indecent assault.
Police interview details
In her recorded interview with the police, which was played to the court on Thursday morning, the woman said she talked to Brand at the cabaret show, and invited him to continue their conversation at her hotel room when he showed interest in her political ideas. She says Brand, once in the room, stripped off his shirt and began to “prance around” like an ostrich and perform “goose steps” in the style of Basil Fawlty.
The woman said she first saw Brand as an “intellectual person” when they met, and believed she was “sexually safe with him”. When Mr Winter suggested she “wanted a young man who you met for a short time to join you in a very small bedsit”, she responded: “I thought he was a gay man, very softly spoken, very effeminate.”
She responded angrily to the suggestion that she “fell under his spell”. “That’s not correct,” she said. “He seemed to have empathy for what I was saying, but all the time he seems to have had something else in his mind.” She told police Brand had a “snake-like, disgusting” body, and she told the court she saw him “as a bit of an ‘ugh’” who made her feel “nauseous”.
Cross-examination clashes
Over the course of nearly two hours of heated cross-examination, Mr Winter accused the woman of not telling the truth about her encounter with Brand, and suggested she would have left the hotel room if she was in danger of being raped. She said she was “terrified” as she complied with Brand’s request that she photograph him, and baulked at the idea that she could have fled.
She asked: “Where am I supposed to go? Run into the night and him chase after me? Of course I wanted to distance myself but I had nowhere to run.”
At one point, Mr Winter also clashed with trial judge, Mr Justice Bennathan, who had to “shush” the barrister during a tense exchange in court. The barrister was grilling the alleged victim on whether she said out loud that she did not wanted to have sex with Brand during the hotel encounter. When the judge interjected to point out evidence the court had earlier heard on the video-recorded interview with police, Mr Winter said tersely: “Forgive me… I am conducting a cross-examination.” When the two legal figures then spoke at the same time, Mr Justice Bennathan said to the barrister: “Shush. I’m the judge.”
At the close of the cross-examination, the woman referenced Brand’s recent appearance on Piers Morgan’s show “talking about shame and reputation”, and told the court: “I am the one being silenced.” Faced with the suggestion that she wanted to have sex with Brand at the time, she added: “I can 100% tell you I did not consent, I did not find him attractive.”
The trial continues.
